Valentine's Day is just around the corner, and love is in the air. Unfortunately, some people fall in love with the wrong things. Check out these 10 couples who fell in love . . . with crime!
2. Bonnie And Clyde
What’s a list of notorious partners in crime without the most famous
outlaw duo? Clyde Champion Barrow and Bonnie Parker met in
Texas in 1930. She was 19 and married to an imprisoned murderer;
Clyde was 21 and single. Soon after they met, he was arrested for
burglary. Using a gun smuggled to him by Bonnie, he escaped
prison but was later recaptured. When he was paroled in 1932, he
joined Bonnie for two years of violent crime that included
kidnappings, multiple robberies, burglaries, and 13 murders.
In 1934, the couple was ambushed and killed in Louisiana. They
were never married, and we don’t know much of their personal
histories, but their brutal heists are the stuff filmmakers would kill to
create. And so they did. Their story became a 1967 Oscar-winning
film, and a 2013 A&E TV mini-series. Sometimes crime does pay (at
least for film producers).
3. The Lonely Hearts Killers
Raymond Fernandez And Martha Beck
Fernandez was serving time for petty theft when he learned from a
cellmate about voodoo. Figuring he could use this practice to
influence vulnerable women, he began responding to wanted ads
posted by singles in his town. His intention was to woo the lonely
ladies, rob them blind, and disappear. Martha Beck was one of the
interested women, but when she showed up at his place with two
kids in tow, Fernandez told her to abandon them at the Salvation
Army. She actually obeyed, and the couple began a joint venture to
scam women.
When Beck became too jealous of Fernandez’s relationships, the
couple began killing their targets. They were arrested for murdering a
young widow and her child. After signing a 73-page confession,
Fernandez and Beck were executed in 1951 in the electric chair at
Sing Sing prison in New York. As The Lonely Hearts Killers are
believed to have killed up to 20 people, maybe you should re-think
4. Julius And Ethel Rosenberg
They aren’t vicious criminals, but they were the first U.S.
civilians to be executed for conspiracy to commit espionage.
Having allegedly shared top-secret information about the
atomic bomb to the Soviet Union, their punishment stirred up
public debate for decades. Many claimed the couple were
victims of hysterical anti-communist sentiment in the U.S.
(Even Pope Pius XII requested their pardon.)
But the Cold War was a heated matter for the U.S., so guilty
or not, President Eisenhower declined granting clemency for
the couple. They were executed in 1953 at Sing Sing prison in
the electric chair, two years after the Lonely Hearts Killers.
Both proclaimed their innocence up to the time of their
deaths.
5. Caril Fugate And Charles Starkweather
A visit to Caril’s home in January 1958 ended in the
murders of Caril’s parents and two-year-old sister. Caril
and Charles then fled on a killing spree that took 10
lives in three days, and covered a 500-mile stretch from
Nebraska to Wyoming.
The modern-day Bonnie and Clyde became a highly
sensationalized story about disaffected youth in
America (Charles was 19 and Caril was 14). Their story
also inspired the Terrence Malick’s Badlands and Oliver
Stone’s Natural Born Killers. Maybe the film world
should rethink glorifying young couples with a penchant
for serial murder?
6. Kurt Cobain And Courtney Love
The two star-crossed lovers had a tragic ending just like the
dramatic and morbid flair of the music that made them famous.
In 1990, the troubled Cobain found his match in the equally
erratic Courtney Love. Their whirlwind love affair started the
next year, and they married and had a daughter in 1992. The
couple fought a costly legal battle to keep custody of their
daughter after Courtney declared to Vanity Fair that she’d
been using heroin while pregnant.
In 1993, Cobain was arrested for assault after a physical
altercation between the two. Cobain became more and more
withdrawn and drug-dependent, making suicidal threats until
his actual suicide in April 1994. Not that she was ever stable to
begin with, but Love has since been on a downward spiral.
And if it’s true that “Heart Shaped Box” was inspired by the
couple’s marriage, well, that relationship was doomed to fail.
7. Tonya Harding And Jeff Gillooly
Tonya Harding is the former Olympic ice skater with a tomboy charm
and underdog reputation. She’s also the first American woman to land a
triple axel in competition. But all her talent’s been squandered by
scandals involving her lovers. At the 1994 Olympics, fellow American
skater, Nancy Kerrigan, was struck in the leg in the women’s locker
room. Later investigators revealed that Tonya’s ex-husband, Jeff
Gillooly, had organized the attack with the help of a hired hit man,
accomplices, and (allegedly) Tonya.
Tonya was arrested six years later for throwing a hubcap at her live-in
boyfriend. Harding told police that her boyfriend had pinned her to the
ground, and she hit him out of self-defense. He reported it was no
regular beating: she was "hooking (him) like Mike Tyson." For an
Olympic athlete with a penchant for temper tantrums, that comes as no
surprise. Now that Harding teaches figure skating at a mall in Portland,
OR, we can only hope she doesn’t try to teach her pupils the definition of
“good sportsmanship.”
8. Whitney Houston And Bobby Brown
Rumors have circulated for years of bad-boy singer Bobby Brown having a
bad influence on the once-pristine pop star, Whitney Houston. Their chaotic
14-year marriage included multiple allegations of drug use and physical
abuse. But according to Brown’s new tell-all, Bobby Brown: The Truth, the
Whole Truth and Nothing But. . . , it was Whitney that got him into illegal
drugs.
"At one point in my life, I used drugs uncontrollably,” he wrote. “I was using
everything I could get my hands on, from cocaine to heroin, weed and
cooked cocaine."
Whitney died in February 2012 of an accidental drowning, though authorities
said it had been complicated by heart disease and cocaine use. A year after
Whitney’s death, Bobby turned himself in to LA County jail officials for an
eight-day sentence for DUI under a restricted license. He’d been on
probation for a DUI arrest the previous March. That’s not the end of it. He
was handed a jail sentence in 2000 after a court-ordered drug test show
traces of cocaine in his system. In 1996, he had a five-day jail stint for
crashing Whitney’s Porsche while under the influence.
9. Shannon And Dale Hickman
This Oregon couple was convicted in 2011 of seconddegree manslaughter after opting out of seeking medical
help for their dying child. The two were members of the
Followers of Christ Church, a sect that generally favors
home-healing techniques over professional medical care.
Shannon Hickman, the mother, allegedly never sought
prenatal care during her pregnancy.
Instead of taking him to a doctor during and after the child’s
birth, the two prayed and rubbed olive oil on their sick
infant. Though her son was born two months early, medical
experts testified that had the parents sought medical care,
the baby would have had a 99 percent chance of survival.
But Dale Hickman testified that he didn’t call 911 because he was praying, and Shannon claimed no responsibility because as
a woman of the church, decisions were deferred to her husband. "That's not my decision anyway," she testified. "I think it's
God's will whatever happens." The couple will face a $250,000 fine and a sentence of 18-month max in prison. That’s a light
sentence in comparison to a typical six-year sentence for secondary manslaughter, but they were protected by religious
exemption in Oregon state law.
10. Real Housewives Of New Jersey’s
Teresa And Joe Giudice
Lifestyles of the rich and famous can apparently
include 39 counts of tax fraud and evasion. Teresa
and Joe Giudice, the outspoken couple on The
Real Housewives of New Jersey, have been
accused of failing to file tax returns, falsifying loan
applications, and failing to report assets in a
bankruptcy petition.
If convicted, they could face up to 30 years in
prison and a $1 million fine. Joe is also headed to
court after being caught using a false license using
his brother’s identification information. His license
has been suspended 47 times over the last 26
years. All these scandals beg the question, Why
did it take so long for the couple to get caught?
11. Bob And Maureen McDonnell
They don’t look too happy, but it’s only ‘cuz they got caught.
The former Virginia governor and his wife were indicted on
Jan. 21 on 14 counts of corruption. Federal prosecutors
accused the governor of accepting $135,000 in gifts and loans
(and “thousands of dollars in golf outings”) from then-Star
Scientific CEO Jonnie Williams.
It all started in 2009 when Maureen asked Williams to cover
the cost of her inaugural dress because, as she allegedly
wrote in an email to Williams, “We are broke, have an
unconscionable amount in credit card debt already, and this
inaugural is killing us!!" She later decided not to accept the
dress (good idea, Maureen).
But she did say she’d take a “raincheck” (bad idea). The later gifts came in the form of Louis Vuitton shoes, a Rolex watch,
golf clubs, iPhones, home repairs, shopping sprees, and contributions to the weddings of the two McDonnell daughters.
Even after all this, McDonnell denied breaking the law, saying he was "falsely and wrongly accused" by federal
prosecutors. Perhaps he’s hoping that if he’s convicted, someone will have pity enough to foot his assuredly hefty bail.
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